Airport Extreme: any reason to upgrdae from a Linksys 54G?

[albireo13]

I currently have a Linksys WRT54G wireless router, connected to my Linksys cable modem box. I get cable internet service through Comcast. It seems to work well but sometimes service is slow. I've heard good things about the AEBS. Is there any good reason to switch over to a AEBS? Will performance improve?

I am interested in possibly having a networked printer. Does this work well with the AEBS?

Thanks,
Rob
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Mac-mini 1.66G Intel Duo
2G RAM
60G stock HD

[SlipperyRock]

Just got one a few weeks ago and love it. I can think of a few good reasons to trade up.

1. You're going to want or need 802.11n sooner or later.

2. It has great range with 802.11n or 802.11g

3. It has Gigabit Ethernet.

4. Shared USB printing works extremely well. That also counts with Windows machines.

5. AirDisk also works nice, albeit a tad on the slow side. This also works great with Windows machines.

6. It's really easy to setup and make adjustments with the AirPort Utilty.

7. It has a small and sexy footprint.

[Wedge]

By "slow" are you referring to your speed to and from the internet? Or from machine to machine from within your LAN?

If it's internet slowdowns you're encountering, it's unlikely using another router will make a difference, as the bottleneck is most likely your internet connection. I'm on Comcast's 6 megabit service, for example, and that doesn't even come close to saturating my 802.11g network that runs at 54 megabit. The current AEBS, being 802.11n, tops out at nearly 300 megabit, far greater than nearly everyone's internet connections.

However, if you're doing a lot of file transfers within your network from machine to machine, you might get some nice speed differences if everything is operating with an 802.11n card (which the Mini doesn't currently have). The other big benefit of 802.11n is range. The AEBS can get some pretty impressive distances, which previously required repeaters with 802.11g devices.

I do not have the current AEBS, but I do have the previous UFO-style one. As for printing, it's alright. It's not 100% reliable, I've had better reliability with my D-Link print server, but the AEBS printer sharing is certainly easy to set up.

[devo]

[albireo13]

Thanks guys. Actually, only my mini seems slow and this is accessing the internet. I really don't do much between machines. I use it for mostly wireless internet access, although I'd like to add a networked HD so that that all the computers can access a central storage ... pics, video, etc.

Seems like it wouldn't buy me much improvement.
I'll stick with the Linksys for now.

Rob

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Mac-mini 1.66G Intel Duo
2G RAM
60G stock HD

[Fox]

Your problem could be the network settings rather than the hardware. I have Sympatico high speed internet, and for awhile, I would get these long connection delays that I assumed were related to a problem with the OS. It turned out that unbeknownst to me, Sympatico changed the default settings from specifying specific IP addresses to check first, to a roaming DCHP address. So what was happening was my Mac was first checking these defunct IP addresses before roaming, causing a delay in loading websites. Once I found that out and removed the IP addresses, my internet connection went back to being very fast.

I'm not suggesting that this is your problem, but any network settings that aren't optimal for your ISP and equipment will slow down the loading of websites.
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Mini 1: 2.3 ghz Core i5; 8 gb RAM, Corsair 240gb SSD, 500 gb Seagate XT
Mini 2: 2.26 ghz Core 2 duo, 8 gb RAM, 500 gb Seagate
Also a Cube, 13" MacBook Air, 20" 2.66 ghz iMac & 11.6" Acer 1810TZ running Ubuntu, Mint & openSuse

[albireo13]

I have Comcast cable internet. The other machines, wirless off the same router, are much faster. It's just my Mini. This is a fairly recent development .. past 2 months. I have about 15G free of the 60G HD right now. Any clues?

Are you talking about network settings in the router? or settings for my mini?

Rob